Open Access Publishing Navigating the Costly Landscape and Author Expectations

In 2020, Joachim Schöpfel and I planned to publish an anthology on research data, topics to be covered should include issues such as fake data (even then we were thinking about AI-generated data) and their detection, data markets, data reuse rates, blockchain, and health data.

However, we had underestimated what had changed since 2018. Back then Open Divide – Critical Studies on Open Access, edited by Joachim and me was published. The publisher Rory Litwin sold the book in print, but not online. However, he allowed all authors to publish their contributions in the version of record under the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International License. Some authors also chose the CC BY 4.0, without Rory Litwin being bothered by it. The authors could make their contributions available in open repositories or other websites (Green Open Access), without publication fees.

Nevertheless, there were complaints that Open Divide was the „example of a book about Open Access that is unfortunately not available Open Access“. Despite these concerns, the book achieved what I consider to be a remarkable dissemination. Whether their chapters would be published as Open Access or not, was not decided by us, but solely by the authors — it was their free choice.
So the book is not available Open Access in all its parts, because two authors decided not to use the Open Access option; interestingly contributors from the so-called global south. A list of all chapters and available Open Access versions can be found here.

Unlike in 2016 (when we started work on Open Divide and communicated the general conditions to the authors), in 2020 hardly any author was willing to contribute to a book that does not appear Gold Open Access or is delayed Open Access — even if their chapter (as with Open Divide) could have been made available under a CC BY licence in the version of record without embargo.

In 2020 most of the potential authors we contacted required these things to write a contribution:

  • Gold Open Access publication of the book as a whole
  • CC BY License for the book as a whole
  • Subject-relevant and reputable publisher (preferably international)

The last point eliminated my university’s Open Access publisher from the list of possible publication venues. Looking at common Book Processing Charges (BPCs) quickly made me realise that financing would be difficult, see e.g. data from OpenAPC or ubiquity press dated 2020. Therefore, we approached a publisher that publishes titles without charging a BPC. However, this is only possible after a thorough review, which is reasonable since the publisher is funded through consortia. Nevertheless, we found ourselves in a dilemma: we could not guarantee the authors (as they demanded) that the book would be published Open Access by this publisher — on the other hand, we were not willing (in the absence of funding) to pay a rather high fee out of our own pocket if the publisher only wanted to publish the book in return for BPC, to fulfill the obligation demanded by the authors. We also inquired with another relevant publisher about their BPC waiver program. Our question was: „Since we do not have funding for Open Access publication of the book, I would like to ask how to apply for the Waiver Scheme from *publisher name*: Do we apply for the waiver with a book first and enter into a contract if the waiver is granted, or do you enter into a contract with *publisher name* and then apply for the waiver?“ The reply was: „To apply for a waiver, you just need to note in the funding section of the proposal form that you would like to apply to the waiver scheme. We will then consider your book proposal with the understanding that we will need to fund the book if it successfully passes peer review.“

The procedure is understandable, but it offered us no alternative: since we could not guarantee an Open Access publication without BPC, the authors did not want to contribute to the fees, and we did not want to invest private funds, the book ultimately was never published.

The impression left was that publishing an Open Access book is primarily a matter of cost, suggesting that if one truly wants to publish the book, they must be prepared to cover the expenses themselves, which makes publication somewhat of a luxury. However, perhaps I am being too pessimistic. I am aware that many universities in Germany today have funds for (partial) financing of Open Access books; however, these are not universally available, and in our case, the maximum funding amount would hardly have covered the costs. Additionally, my university now has such a fund, but I would be reluctant to apply for funding since I manage it and do not want to give the impression of misusing this role. I also know that in Germany (and likely in other non-English speaking countries), it is common to pay high printing cost subsidies for books (BPCs) even in Closed Access; however, Closed Access (unlike Open Access) does not claim participation as its principle. That said, I do not want to demonize Open Access BPCs, as publishers need to find ways to finance themselves, and providing service is a significant value that deserves fair compensation. Nevertheless, it bothers me that the opportunity to publish an Open Access Book is so dependent on financial resources. What has disturbed me more, however, are authors who demanded that a book licensed under CC BY be an unconditional requirement for a contribution but categorically excluded any participation in the costs.

Von Ulrich Herb

Graduate sociologist, information scientist (PhD degree), associate of scidecode science consulting – De Castro, Herb, Rothfritz GbR, working for the Saarland University and State Library (Germany)

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